Every failure in life goes back to the soil for a new start.
That is the fact; now for the rule. It is this: God intended that man should be, first of all, a soil-worker. And tilling the soil includes not only planting, but bringing all growing and living things thereon to strength.
Rearing things on the soil is man's natural vocation, since neither drought, nor flood, nor failure, can shut out from his heart that instinct of hope which has come down through so many centuries of soil-loving ancestors. The hoping instinct has been housed in him so long that it is part of his heredity.
Maritime nations found empires, but not religions. Religions come from the soil. Men, living in the open, watching their flocks by night, find in the eternal wonder of the soul-questioning stars that which satisfies their own souls.
Imagine fighting Rome founding a religion! Or bookish Greece! Or the trading Saxon!
Religions come from mangers. All great soul-dreams were born amid flocks and herds.
This is my own story, and the telling of it shall be in my own way. And as I am not a writer, but a forester, doubtless my telling will be all awry. For I have seen enough of life to know that the generals who have won in the field of fiction, like the generals who have won in the field of fact, have won because they have had the drilling.
And in my case the drilling has been only trees—trees, and their children, the flowers.
CHAPTER II
LITTLE SISTER